


turn my sorrow into treasure, into roses

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Catharsis, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Female Friendship, Friends as Family, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired By Tumblr, Memorials, Miscarriage, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Rogue One - some of them live, Tumblr Prompt, background Shara Bey/Kes Dameron - Freeform, mention of Chirrut Imwe/Baze Malbus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-22 00:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11368848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: The truth comes out of Jyn like broken bones and a lanced wound, as she is forced to reveal the trauma that she had been keeping secret from her friends.





	turn my sorrow into treasure, into roses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jeeno2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/gifts), [vaultfox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaultfox/gifts).



> Before I fell headlong into _Star Wars Rogue One_ and straight into the Rebelcaptain pairing, I was very much losing my inspiration in terms of writing for my fandoms at that point -- Stevebucky, Jedistormpilot, and other things that were just knocking around in my head in such random ways that I didn’t have any focus at all.
> 
> And it wasn’t helping that I was suffering from major emotional lows in my life, sapping my already-reduced drive to create something.
> 
> And then I joined [@rebelcaptainprompts](https://rebelcaptainprompts.tumblr.com/) and my heart and my mind went boom. (Not to mention my keyboard!)
> 
> Over twenty weeks and twenty prompts later: ideas! All these new AUs to explore and to write more of! New fandom friends! So much inspiration!
> 
> I am thoroughly thoroughly grateful to [@jeeno2](https://jeeno2.tumblr.com/) and [@vaultfox](https://vaultfox.tumblr.com/) for creating the @rebelcaptainprompts blog and community, and for all their prompts and challenges and special events.
> 
> This is my final story for @rebelcaptainprompts, and it is centered around the prompt “gratitude”.
> 
> Long live Rebelcaptain!

Bright sparking flash of irritated pain slashing down her worn nerves, as she grits her teeth against the urge to tap her foot in impatience. For one thing, her left foot is swathed in several layers of bacta pads and splints; for the other, her right foot is halfway to peeking out of her slashed boot. And she doesn’t even have the energy to scratch that is developing somewhere in the back of her neck -- she can almost feel the blisters rising on her skin, and the hot red weal, and the blood rising too close to the surface.

Maybe she’s listing to the side; she can’t tell. There’s just the narrowing, fading awareness of the handhold near the controls for the cargo hatch, the material and her skin all damp with her own sweat and -- everything else she’s been wading through. Her own blood on her fingertips wouldn’t be a surprise. Swampwater, and the fetid yuk of some disabled old garbage compactor that had become a graveyard for dead prey animals and about fifteen species of creepy-crawly anyway, on a smuggler’s-haven planet somewhere in the Mid-Rim. 

Slowly the engines go quiet and still beneath her feet, and the vibration and the noises start up from a different direction: from behind her. A handful of operatives coming in for various debriefings and new missions. 

“Jyn. We really need to get you to Medical now.”

She blinks, and even that very small motion is so very tiring, and she turns her head just the barest minimum necessary to take a look at the woman with the helmet. She tries to force a smile. Tries to force the words out. “I’m not sure I can even move.”

“That’s about what I thought,” is Shara Bey’s reply, equally hushed. “So come on.”

And Jyn is wordlessly grateful for Shara’s wiry strength, as she leans heavily onto the offered shoulder. As she makes her feet move and another bright bolt of pain shoots up her leg -- she clamps her teeth down around her choked groan, and just moves. Forward, forward, one step after the other.

From one set of engines thrumming underfoot to another: because they’ve landed on a particularly massive capital ship, one of the Rebel Alliance’s largest vessels, and she’s given to understand that this one functions partly as a mobile training ground for new recruits, and partly as home to several of the ragtag teams overseeing things like logistics and long-range communications.

She barely notices the ragged clutch of beings sitting in chairs of various forms and sizes, clustered around a blue-skinned woman and the board on which is pinned a schematic of a Y-wing. Barely notices the maintenance techs and droids as they swarm around a light freighter, doing only skies and stars alone know what. Barely notices the elegantly-dressed male human and his richly-dressed companions, all hurrying away on some errand or another. 

But she does notice the littles in their own enclosure, drawing all eyes and all notice as they chant their lessons under the keen eyes of -- 

And Jyn blinks.

Since when was Leia Organa a schoolteacher?

She feels it when Shara steers them carefully towards that enclosure, and when Shara hooks her foot around a dingy crate. She’s only too grateful to sit.

And Shara steps away from her. Raises a hand in greeting to Leia. “I’m back. And I got her back like you said.”

“Thank you,” Leia says, and she turns to the young ones and adds, with a small smile, “Say hello to a brave pilot, littles: this is Shara Bey.”

A high chorus of greetings follows -- but some of the children are too young to speak and that’s the group that Shara heads for, stooping towards one of the makeshift cribs.

Something that isn’t really envy or jealousy stirs like blades within Jyn’s gut as Shara straightens up with a dark-haired toddler in her arms; and through the dull drone of pain she can hear her friend murmuring: “Mi hijo, how I’ve missed you.”

A shadow falls over her then.

It takes her a long moment to focus her attention on Leia. 

Who says, “I’m not going to ask you if you’re all right: I’m just going to ask you if you can still make it to Medical.”

“No.” Even that one word wears Jyn out.

Leia, strangely, smiles. “Good. You’re not going to swagger around and proclaim you’re still good to punch the Empire in the face, when you’re all but falling to pieces.”

Jyn musters up a jibe: “I don’t need a telling-off, but maybe someone else does.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Leia taps the commlink pinned to the collar of her jacket. “Threepio, we’ll need that chair now.”

“Yes, Princess,” comes the prissy reply.

And in Threepio’s wake: Chewbacca, who grunts out a short, succinct phrase of kind worry, and plucks Jyn up from the crate to stow her safely in a hoverchair.

“Thank you,” she mutters, and one hairy paw lands on her shoulder, a weight of care in those keen eyes.

“Broken leg,” the medic says when she arrives, data-pad tucked into the crook of one arm. But Jyn already knows that. The echoes from her cut-off scream from when she’d been jarred on the way from hoverchair to cot are still caroming around in her ears. 

The next parts are a little more of a surprise, enough that Jyn sighs: “Both shoulders dislocated. Low-grade fever. Fatigue. When was the last time you slept?”

“I have no idea,” Jyn finally says.

“Maybe I should be telling you off after all,” Leia says, from where she’s standing next to a deactivated medical droid. 

“You’ve done the same,” Jyn makes herself say.

“Yes. And I’ve slept afterwards. You think you’re any different?”

She sighs, eventually. “I don’t like sleeping. Bad dreams.”

The stern look in Leia’s eyes softens into a frown. “Well, in that case. Doctor?” 

The medic stoops closer, and now Jyn can see the bright-blue eyelashes, the blue roots of her hair. “Eight-hour sedative,” she says, and there’s nothing to do but to sigh out an assent.

It might have been longer, if it had all been left up to Leia.

She eyes the drug with no small amount of apprehension, when it’s finally introduced into her body -- but she forces herself to go still, to stop herself from fighting it, and she reluctantly closes her eyes and lets out her breath in long, slow exhales.

She only distantly feels it when the medic begins to work on her splinted foot -- she’s falling, falling -- 

**

There’s an odd weight on her chest when she finally begins to wake up -- and she would fight it off, she would try to get rid of it in some way, if only it wasn’t -- breathing?

And in any case her hands are still too heavy from the weight of her sleeping hours.

There’s nothing to do but force her eyes open.

Dark hair in a riot of little curls, and dusky brown skin, and a tiny chubby star-shaped hand, right over her heart. 

As she watches, Poe Dameron shifts, doesn’t quite manage to roll himself over, and burps loudly.

A thin dribble of milk seeps onto her shirt. 

She runs a fingertip very gingerly over the crown of Poe’s head.

He smells of warm blankets and Shara Bey’s favorite flowers. 

In a moment he’s gurgling and trying to reach for his little toes, and Jyn startles herself by barking out a small laugh -- though it causes sparks of pain to shatter along her nerves, and she winces and grits her teeth around her cry, for fear of disturbing the child on her chest.

The longer she looks at him, the longer she feels the weight of him on her, the more it feels like her heart is being cored out of her.

The laugh tapers away, and she lets the tears flow down her cheeks, and turns into the pillow.

“Oh,” says a quiet voice, suddenly, and Jyn tries to blink herself into some semblance of not-crying. 

Silver hair wound around the crown of her head in an intricate braid, a stark contrast to her grimy shirt and trousers. There’s a pile of material in the newcomer’s arms, however, and as Jyn watches, she pulls on a long-sleeved apron, clean white patched with different scraps of color. 

“Come here, you,” she laughs for the benefit of the child on Jyn’s chest, and she tucks Poe carefully into the large pocket on the front of the apron. 

Poe giggles, loudly, and then puts three fingers into his mouth.

“How are you feeling?” There is such understanding in those eyes.

Jyn shrugs. Tries to. “Leia sent you here?”

“Yes,” Winter Retrac says, and rummages around in one of her other pockets, coming up with a small pouch of milk for Poe. “And I also have a few things to tell you.” 

“New orders?” Jyn asks. 

Is that hope in her voice, she wonders.

Winter only shakes her head. “Not quite the ones you might have had in mind. You’re not going to be combat-ready for a while, not with all those injuries you need to recover from.”

“Bacta.”

“There isn’t enough,” Winter says, and she looks apologetic, even as she chucks Poe under the chin. “We had a few other operatives come in -- ”

Jyn waves the rest of the explanation away. “I completely understand.”

“You’re next on the list,” Winter says, reassuringly.

“I don’t mind, seriously.” Jyn says. “It’s a war. The Rebellion’s needs outweigh mine. I understand.”

“I’m not saying you don’t understand.”

“I hear a ‘but’ coming.” With the pain still lingering in her skin like spikes, she can’t turn over, or get more comfortable.

“But you really want to be away from here, and that’s what we -- Leia and I -- don’t understand.”

Breathing. One breath after another. Breathing, to stay alive. Breathing, so she doesn’t cry or scream or do something to frighten Winter or Poe or herself -- 

A hand on her wrist. Winter’s worried face. “Jyn. I truly am sorry, if I’ve caused you any distress.”

She doesn’t shrug the hand away, though she desperately wants to hold on to it.

Poe lets out a tiny sob, then -- a sob that changes into a series of little hiccups, and then a wail -- 

“Give him to me,” Jyn says.

“Jyn,” Winter says.

“He was calm, earlier, with me. It might help.”

Winter looks like she wants to protest, but only for a moment: and then she lifts Poe despite his best attempts to wriggle away, despite his continuing little cries. Lifts him, and makes hushing sounds at him, and then puts him back onto Jyn’s chest.

Poe kicks out, and the baby-weight of him means there’s no force behind those kicks, and Jyn finally lets the tears flow out of her, as his seem to drain away.

Winter presses one of her sleeves to Jyn’s cheek.

“It hurts too much,” she says. “And it’s too difficult to keep remembering it.”

“I know how that feels,” Winter says.

“Yes, yes you do. So -- I don’t want to tell you this story. I want to spare you. I will tell Leia, and I will tell her not to tell you. Just -- give you the very general idea.”

“I -- that’s kind of you, Jyn. Thank you.”

“I’m not kind,” Jyn says, almost out of reflex. “I’m in pain. But I don’t want anyone to be in pain.”

“Yes.”

And in the meantime, Poe is calm once again, breathing contentedly on Jyn’s chest.

Again she touches the top of his head, where he is warm and vital, where he smells of milk and flowers and now the sheets that Jyn’s been lying on, where his hands close and open against her and his feet poke gently into her stomach, and she would get up, she would run away, she would scrub the sight from her memories if only she could.

But she just looks up and Winter is now just a blurry shape, because of her tears. “Leia and Shara, please. Get them if you can.”

“I will make them come here, no matter what.” And she slips away, sure-footed and swift.

And Jyn’s hand slips, from Poe’s head to his back -- 

Holding him to her heart.

**

But Leia and Shara don’t appear, not for a few days -- and even Poe himself is gone when Jyn wakes up again. In his place is a sheet of flimsi and the hurried handwriting of Kes Dameron: _I shipped out. I’m out of all of this. Poe needs a parent. Shara will keep on fighting. As for me, I’ll be home on Yavin 4, if you have time to look us up. Don’t be a stranger._

It takes days before she can finally lever herself upright to a sitting position, and to stay there for hours at a time.

The painkillers allow her to sleep, when she’s worn out from hours of weeping.

Bodhi comes and visits for several hours one day, and she watches his gnarled callused pilot’s hands as he sews a new patch onto his worn flight suit. Listens to his stories. He never asks her for any of hers.

A message comes in from Baze during a particularly long night: _What we love the most, we sorrow over the most. But you are alive, and you can love again. And if you do not believe that, then believe that you are loved, and that love will see you through your sorrow. He and I will care for you, even so._

**

When she wakes up and she can hear someone else breathing long and deeply, very close by, she looks down at her chest first: and there’s no one there. The weightlessness of a child who isn’t there: and no, Poe hasn’t been brought to her.

There is no child here.

She only has to turn her head to see the cot pushed up next to hers, and to see its occupant.

Sleeping though Cassian Andor might be, he looks like he’s been searching for some kind of peace, some kind of respite, and his hands are clenched into fists like he’s lost what he’s searching for.

Grief has etched the old lines in his face more deeply. Has multiplied the silver in his hair so that it’s easier to find, colorless strands scattered more visibly at his temples.

The stink of bacta on his skin: and here Jyn’s heart lurches, here she almost cries, and she reaches out to him, blindly. Where she gets the strength to pull him close she doesn’t know: and she hitches herself around him, pressing his head into her chest and he wakes up with a loud gasp, with a cry that is half-strangled around her name, and when he weeps her tears fall like rain onto his hair.

“Cassian,” she says, over and over. “Cassian. It hurts too much.”

“Yes,” is all he says.

“I still wake up and think she must be,” and Jyn doesn’t need to touch her belly, because Cassian’s palm is already there. “Think she must be here. She’s not, she’s not here. Not with us.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” and the words are so hard to make out.

“It wasn’t yours either.”

“I left you.”

“You needed to do what you needed to do.”

“And you needed me.”

“I did. I do. Like I need her.”

A soft oath, muttered from the door of the room.

Jyn makes herself look up.

Leia, and a towheaded shape next to her: same shoulders, same purpose of movement. 

The lights come on, and Jyn hunches protectively over Cassian.

The man next to Leia has a lightsaber hilt hanging from his waist.

This must be Luke Skywalker. 

Two chairs next to him -- he must have carried them in here.

And Luke says, “I’m so sorry for what you’ve lost. For whom you’ve lost.”

“I didn’t know,” Leia says. 

“I didn’t tell anyone,” Jyn says in response. “I couldn’t tell anyone.”

“One year, and almost one hundred days,” Cassian says, as he pulls away.

And Jyn would cry out in protest, but he’s sitting up and he’s gathering her close, and it’s her turn to hide her tears. She leans her forehead into his shoulder. Feels him sob beside her, and keeps her arms wound wound around his waist.

“How did you lose your child?” Luke asks. He is ashen-faced. His voice is quiet and gentle. “You said _her_. Your daughter.”

“Imperials,” Jyn sighs. “How else?”

“One year and -- you were in the Core Worlds,” Leia says, and sounds pained by the realization. “That mission to Coruscant.”

“I knew what I was doing,” Jyn says. “I tried to stay behind the scenes. If I was forced from cover, if I was placed in danger, it wasn’t because of what I did.”

“I know. I’ve read the report.”

“You saw the part where I was rescued from a garrison?”

“Yes.”

Jyn shivers all over at the memory. “How do you think I got there? Stun bolts. Two or three would not have hurt -- but they were bastards, as they always were. Kes counted at least ten shots.”

When Leia speaks again, she sounds furious. “Humans have died from fewer stun bolts.”

“Heart attacks. I know,” Jyn says. “But clearly I didn’t have one. Something else happened to me instead. I was eighteen weeks along -- I was still clear to go. I was planning to go on leave afterwards.” She makes herself straighten up. Makes herself scrub away the tears. “And I did go on leave afterwards. I just did it for a different reason.”

“And I left her three weeks into her leave,” Cassian says. “Back to Fest, and then to other things -- ”

A loud clatter.

Leia on her feet, and anguish in her face. The chair that she had been sitting on, overturned.

Luke’s hand wrapped tightly around hers.

“We have been very, very unkind to the two of you,” she finally says after a very long moment.

“I didn’t come here for gratitude,” Jyn snaps. “And if there’s anyone to blame here, it’s not you. Neither of you. It’s not the Alliance. We know who to blame. I don’t blame him. And if I blame myself, it’s because of the grief, because of the pain.”

“You are more than just operatives. More than just officers,” Leia begins.

Jyn opens her mouth to speak.

Cassian beats her to the draw. “We are what we need to be, for the sake of the Alliance,” he says. “And that’s who we really are. Yes, we’re in pain. But we’re still under your command. We know we’re supposed to follow orders as long as they’re reasonable. That’s it, really: you tell us what we do, and if we think what you want makes sense, if we think what you want gets us all closer to what we all want, then we’ll do it. Jyn and I will do it.”

“We just do it through the pain and the grief,” Jyn says. “And we do our best either way. Any way.”

“If you go together on all of your missions from now on -- ” Luke begins.

“No,” Jyn says, gently. “We don’t have that luxury. We can’t have it.”

“Jyn,” Leia says. “I -- we want to help. And by that I mean -- me. High Command, once they know.”

“Tell them,” Cassian says. “Tell them what happened to us, and then tell them we will keep going on as we have. My missions, her missions. Things are what they are, and you need us to be working, unless you feel we are no longer fit for duty.”

“And even if you told me to ship out,” Jyn adds, “I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing now.”

“We will,” Cassian says. “With the Alliance or not. Until the Empire is gone. Until we’re done.”

She looks at him, then: alight with resolve, with weary faith.

Not for the first time, she wonders what he sees when he looks at her.

Movement out of the corner of her eye: and Leia is there, standing next to her bed. “Jyn. Please let us do something. You’re right, you are here because you want to do these things that you’re doing for the Alliance -- but when we say we’re fighting for the rights of all, we’re also fighting for you. We wouldn’t be the Alliance otherwise.”

“Thank you,” Jyn says.

“So then: what do you want, Jyn, Cassian? I mean, what do you want individually, and what do you want together?”

“Just a little time,” Cassian says, after a while. “A little shore leave.”

“Granted,” is the immediate response. “Time to heal, and a little more so you can -- rest.”

“And that’s it,” Jyn says. “We’ll go back to work after that.”

“Counseling,” Luke says.

“I might need it, eventually,” and Jyn nods, once. “Now, however, I can still get by.”

“As long as you do come in for it. And don’t think I won’t ask,” Leia says.

Eventually Leia nods, and says a soft goodbye, and leaves.

Luke says, in her wake, “I will do better,” and vanishes as well.

Leaving her alone with Cassian.

Who eventually looks away, and bites his lip. “I had an idea.”

**

_One year later_

Chime of an incoming message, and Jyn looks up from where she’s annotating the reports from her latest missions, and the chime isn’t coming from the data-pad on the table.

She pulls one of the drawers open: here is her own personal pad, still lit up.

The message is from Kes Dameron.

She looks up at the two other operatives. “Any word on that ship?”

“Already on its way, ma’am.”

“Good. We’re gone as soon as it gets here.”

As soon as she’s alone, she taps on the screen of her personal data-pad.

The message contains one image, of a garden on Yavin 4.

Lush green and so many other colors around the edges, but Jyn only has eyes for the sapling in the center: gracefully curving up towards the sky, gold-and-green leaves emitting a faint glow.

And twined into the branches of that young tree, a vine of broad leaves and questing tendrils, several of which hang down toward the little boy sitting among the roots.

His eyes seem to be fixed on the vine and its single flower: a magnificent bloom in deep red. Whorls upon whorls of petals and a golden-yellow center. 

She bites her lip, and smiles, and sends a message to Kes: _Thank you._

And before she can send a message to Cassian, she receives his: _A little less pain every year, I hope._

 _Thank you for the rose,_ is her reply. _A little easier to think of her, every time._

After sending the message, she brushes a fingertip across the image that Kes had sent, and goes to make plans to head for Yavin 4 -- to meet Cassian there, and to see the first rose for their lost child.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Prompt Twenty: "gratitude" at [@rebelcaptainprompts](https://rebelcaptainprompts.tumblr.com/) over on Tumblr. This is my final story for @rebelcaptainprompts.
> 
> And if you want to talk Rebelcaptain things, look me up [@ninemoons42](https://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


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